We’re only a week away from the momentous premiere of Telemundo’s 80-part telenovela epic on the life of salsa legend Celia Cruz, but do any of us actually have cable? I mean, most of us can get down with a stray episode here and there of Qué te perdone Dios or Bajo el mismo cielo, but for Generation Netflix it’s not really in our DNA to fit in a nightly novela ritual between so much binge-watching.
But luckily Telemundo’s thrown us a bone – a huge bone, in fact – by putting the entirety of Celia’s first episode on Facebook and YouTube, right now. Yes, you read correctly. The entire first episode of the ambitious biographical series is available at this very moment, one week before its television premiere, for streaming on Facebook and YouTube. With no commercials.
This, of course, is the equivalent of giving a millennial an audiovisual crack pipe and saying “here kid, give this a try,” and we can’t say for sure that future episodes will also be online in such a timely fashion. But you’ve been waiting for an excuse to get that cable package anyway right? So set aside 45 minutes for a look into the humble origins of Latin music’s undisputed queen. Hit play on the video up top and enjoy.
Celia, The Series premieres October 13, 2015 at 8 p.m. on Telemundo.
UPDATE 10/18/2016: After premiering on Telemundo last year, all eighty episodes of Celia are now available on Netflix.